


okay i know that you are not my type (still i fall)

by quidhitch



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, but to be clear there is no sex in this lol, lance gets accidentally handcuffed to keiths bed, this is the fluffiest rom com meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 03:24:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11751042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quidhitch/pseuds/quidhitch
Summary: The door swings open and Lance's stomach does a sickening drop. He closes his eyes, thanks the good lord that his dark skin hides most of his flush, and prays for the universe to open up and swallow him whole."Wow. Keith," says the guy standing next to Lance's bane of existence slash brief and minuscule crush slash TA's younger brother, "you could have told me you had a boyfriend, I would have laid off."Keith, who is not as fortunate as Lance, is pink all over as he stutters out an, "I'm not-- he's not--"





	okay i know that you are not my type (still i fall)

_**10:48 PM** _

 

Lance....guesses he kind of deserves this.  
  
He knows he's kind of an asshole sometimes, and after getting into his dream school, scoring a spot in his first choice program, and finding a somewhat affordable off campus apartment to rent with his best friends next year, expecting that Nyma would want to have a kinky quickie with him after giving him the brush off all semester was probably too much.

In any case, ending up handcuffed to his astronomy TA's bed in his Save The Bee briefs with his phone and dignity well out of reach seems a lot like God reminding him to stay humble.  
  
He's also pretty sure Nyma stole his wallet, but joke’s on her because literally all he had in there was a Yeti Yogurt card with one punch, three dollars, and - fuck.  
  
His student ID. Fuck. Even if he does manage to get out of this situation, he's going to have to call campus security to let him into his dorm, and they're gonna pin him for an alcohol or drug violation, and his mom is literally going to kill him when he goes home for winter break next week. Kill him dead. RIP Lance. He may as well start writing his eulogy now, not like there's anything better to do.  
  
He's just starting to come to terms with the fact this might be the worst and most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to him when he hears voices on the other side of the bedroom door and realizes the cosmic forces of the universe have mercilessly decided to up the stakes.  
  
"Listen, Tony, I have a really bad headache, so maybe anoth-"  
  
The door swings open and Lance's stomach does a sickening drop. He closes his eyes, thanks the good lord that his dark skin hides most of his flush, and prays for the universe to open up and swallow him whole.  
  
"Wow. Keith," says the guy standing next to Lance's bane of existence slash brief and miniscule crush slash TA's younger brother, "you could have told me you had a boyfriend, I would have laid off."  
  
Keith, who is not as fortunate as Lance, is pink all over as he stutters out an, "I'm not-- he's not--"  
  
But Tony's ego can't really take it, so he ducks gracefully out of the most awkward moment in the history of Lance’s life, leaving him and Keith to stare at each other in tense and horrified silence.  
  
"Dude," Lance finally blurts out, "could you maybe, uhh... close the door?"  
  
Keith snaps out of whatever traumatized stupor Lance's semi-naked body put him in and whips around to slam the door shut. When he turns back towards Lance, his face is no less pink and his expression no less aghast. He's not saying anything, they're just staring at each other, and Lance can’t really take the silence.  
  
"So...this isn't Shiro's room, huh?"  
  
Keith's eyes get comically wide before Lance realizes the implications of that statement and rushes to correct himself, "wait, wait, wait - no - I'm not fucking your brother, I just thought this was his room since it's his house, God, no, but... hey, wait, you don't think I'd actually have a chance with Shiro, do you?"  
  
Keith closes his eyes and takes a breath, "please stop talking."  
  
Lance awkwardly obeys him, taking a second to stare at Keith while his eyes are closed. He looks... nice. Nicer than Lance has ever seen him - he's traded out his horrendous cropped red jacket for a white t-shirt with the NASA logo on it, but instead of NASA it says gay in neat white letters. It's cropped high enough that when Keith reaches to anxiously tag at his ponytail, it rides up past the waist of his trademark (very tight) black jeans. His hair looks soft like he just washed it and his sneakers are beat up in an effortlessly stylish way.

So yeah. Maybe he looks a little more than good. Maybe he looks fucking fantastic. And it pisses Lance the off because, for one thing, the only article of clothing he has right on now are briefs with tiny bees on them. And for another, fashion was the one area of life where Lance was soundly whipping Keith's butt - the guy already had him beat in class ranks _and_ had every professor in the department so far up his ass they barely looked at anyone else, did he have to take this too? 

"Can I talk now?" Lance asks irritably, ready to get this situation resolved so he can go home and eat approximately 3 rolls of raw cookie dough.  
  
Keith opens his eyes and stares at him, which causes his blush to flare up again, and that's really cute but so not the point so Lance soundly ignores it.  
  
The last thing Lance wants to do is delve into the mortifying details of the situation with Nyma a mere hour after he’s just lived it - to KEITH no less - but there doesn’t seem to be a clearer way out of this. He focuses on a Star Wars poster to the right of Keith’s head and starts talking. In a moment of rare mercy, Keith does not laugh, though as Lance nears the end of his story the corner of his mouth tips up in an echo of a smile.

“So… you don’t have the key.”

“No, I don’t.”

“And you don’t have Nyma’s number?”

“Nope." 

Keith, great innovator that he is, looks about at the end of his rope. Lance would be more smug about this if he was also not at the end of his rope.

“You don’t know how to pick locks?” Lance asks, slightly incredulous.

“What?” Keith blinks, frowning, “no, why would I know how to do that?” 

“Because you ride a motorcycle and wear fingerless gloves?”

“I don’t know how to pick locks,” Keith snaps. They resume staring at each other. Outside, fire truck sirens start sounding. _Same_ , Lance thinks, trying to shift his wrists into a more comfortable position, _fucking same_.

 

_**11:34** _

 

Twenty minutes later and Keith’s phone is balanced on the headboard with the e-How for lock picking open, a bobby pin pinched between his index finger and thumb, a safety pin clipped in Lance’s boxers for back up. Keith’s eyes are narrowed in focus and his thigh keeps nudging up against Lance’s as he tries to go in at different angles, and Lance is very aggressively instructing his dick not to pop a semi.

“Sorry,” Lance says, because maybe if he’s talking Lance Jr. will lose interest, “about pulling you away from the party, I mean.”

“It’s fine,” Keith’s voice is brusque as his fingers go white trying to dig the bobby pin into the lock. “I wanted to relax in my room alone anyways.”

Ouch. Lance feels a twinge of sympathy concerning that but he’s still annoyed with Keith for being beautiful and just generally being Keith, so he pushes on.

“That party is sick, though. Shiro really knows how to throw a rager.”

Keith snorts. “Shiro doesn’t know shit about parties. It was mostly Allura who planned it, she just couldn’t have it at her house for...obvious reasons.”

Lance nods. Allura’s dad is the President of the University, so no one’s really jonesing to do a keg on his front lawn. “That’s hella nice of Shiro to host it though. Clean up must be a bitch.”

“Oh it will be,” Keith grouses, “but short of breaking federal law, Shiro would do anything for her.”

“Why? Are they dating or something?”

Lance asks completely offhand, and it sounds kind of zany when he says it out loud because Shiro is totally gorgeous and amazing but he figures Allura is dating, like… a Congressperson or something.

The way Keith’s arm stiffens and his eyes get all wide and panicky suggest a different story.

“No!” The Kill Bill sirens are going off in Lance’s head.

Keith points the bobby pin and Lance, an accusatory look on his face, “okay, you are not supposed to know that. If you tell anyone I swear I will post this story in vivid detail in the class Facebook group. With pictures.” 

“You haven’t taken any pictures!” 

“Yet. I haven’t yet. I swear to god McClain, do _not_ test me on this. I _will_ leave you here and call your advisor to come pick you up.” 

“...Wow, Keith, okay, chill, I won’t say anything, duh,” Lance could press the issue further, but Keith raises several extremely valid threats of harassment, plus his scary face is not doing wonders for the situation with Lance Jr.

“You better not,” Keith grumbles, though it’s considerably less threatening now that he’s returned to his attempts to uncuff Lance. 

There’s a couple beats of silence where Lance really takes a minute to absorb Keith’s room. He’s barely got any posters up, just the aforementioned Star Wars one and a vintage looking one for a comic character Lance doesn’t recognize. The only other personal details are a photograph of Keith and Shiro propped up on the desk and a pair of socks with little UFOs on them discarded near the dresser. Keith’s room is disturbingly tidy, Lance would bet big money that inside Keith’s dresser all his clothes are color coded and folded military style. Which is creepy but also kind of endearing.

Seeing Keith’s room is weird because despite the lack of personal items on display, Lance is painfully aware he’s currently naked in the place Keith lives, the place where he can crash after class, call his parents, eat raw cookie dough. It makes him more of a real person than Lance ever really wanted him to be. Like before, Keith was just a name to beat, hair Lance could glare at and judge during class, something to motivate him, but now… Well. Being in someone’s room affords a strange sense of intimacy.

Then again, uncuffing someone from your headboard probably has a similar effect.

“Hey,” Lance starts, his voice a shade more sincere, “I really am sorry about this, though. Even if you didn’t want to be at the party, this is your room and Tony was clearly interested in seeing it. _Biblically_ ”

Surprise flickers across Keith’s face - he’s so much more expressive up close - but he doesn’t say anything immediately, a few seconds tick by before he sighs and shakes his head, “..no, that’s, um. I really wanted him to go away.”

Lance knows he should leave it alone, this situation is awkward enough without him prying into Keith’s love life, but he can’t really help himself. He’s been stuck here for an hour and he’s about to jump out of his skin.

“You don’t like Tony?” Lance asks, all casual.

Keith makes a derisive noise in the back of his throat. “No. Tony has the personality of an Adidas flip flop.”

And that, that is pretty funny and too on the nose for Lance not to laugh, so he does, and even though it shakes the lock a little and maybe throws off Keith’s precise bobby pin operation, Keith still returns his smile.

“Sorry,” Lance says, but Keith just shakes his head. “You’re right. About Tony, though. Even if he is pretty cute.”

Keith rolls his eyes, but it’s not particularly venomous. “He’s not really my type.”

“Yeah?” Lance’s curiosity rears more violently than he cares to admit, “what is your type?”

Keith makes that same scoffing nose and shakes his head, “I’m not discussing this with you while you’re handcuffed to my headboard.”

“But you _are_ open to discussing it with me?”

Lance is grinning, cheeky and way too wide considering the circumstances, but he can’t really help it. Keith glances at him from the corner of his eye and a blush flares up on his cheeks, and reading too much into it seems similarly unavoidable. 

Keith lets out a frustrated huff, works his jaw, and drops the bobby pin, “I don’t think I can do this, Lance.”

“It’s fine,” Lance assures, “um, thanks for trying. You can call campus security or something, I’ll deal with it.”

Keith blinks at him for a couple seconds. “You’ve been drinking, though.”

Lance drops his shoulder the best he can with his arms all strung up on the headboard. “Like I said, I’ll deal with it.”

Keith chews on his lips for a few seconds. “...no, I’m not gonna do that.” 

“Um. What?”

“I’m not calling Campus Security,” Keith shrugs, like it’s the most matter-of-fact thing in the world, “it’s fine, you don’t have to get in trouble, I can figure it out.”

It’s like someone spilled something in Lance’s chest cavity, it’s warm and kind and it fills him up and it’s probably an overreaction because really all this guy did is not call some rent-a-cops on him but… Still. He doesn’t really want to say anything, to break whatever it is that’s holding this moment together, so he just lays there contemplating Keith’s blush, Keith’s hair, and the way Keith smells like a sweaty boy but a sweaty boy who knows what soap is.

“Thanks,” Lance says finally.

Keith responds “maybe we have a handsaw in the garage?”

 

_**1:34 AM** _

 

Lance goes along with the handsaw idea right up until Keith takes half a step towards him with it slightly raised in his hand, at which moment Lance lets loose a shriek so loud and high pitched it’s enough to give Keith pause.

“Um,” Keith says, handsaw still raised.

“Just… have you ever used that thing before?”

 Keith rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’ve cut up pipes in the bathroom and wood for doorstoppers.

Lance swallows. “For how long exactly?”

“Lance.”

“I just don’t want you to cut my hand off!”

“Okay, I won’t cut your hand off,” Keith says, as if that solves everything. They stare at each other for a few moments before Lance looks to the left and down and says, “I mean I know you wouldn’t _intentionally_ \--”

“Oh my god, Lance,” Keith says, waving the saw around in a way that does little to soothe Lance’s nerves, “what do you want to do, then? Short of calling the cops, I don’t--” 

“No, I know, I’m sorry,” Lance starts, wishing he had a hand to run through his hair, “I just...can we pause for a second?”

Keith frowns, but his expression has softened slightly, “Pause?”

“Just...maybe if I spent some time with you and the saw before you got so close to my face with it, I’d feel a little better about the whole thing.”

Keith blinks at him.

“You know, like how dogs need to sniff around an area a bunch before they pee on it?”

“So in this scenario I am the area and you are--”

“Bad metaphor,” Lance interrupts, “but basic concept applies, right?” 

Keith’s expression shows that he still has no idea what Lance is talking about, and for a second Lance thinks he’s just gonna call the cops and wash his hands of this whole night once and for all, but… he doesn’t. He tosses the hacksaw on the floor and plops down next to it, leaning against the bedframe. 

“Sorry, Keith.”

“It’s fine.”

“Thanks anyways.”

“...sure, yeah.”

 

_**2:23 AM** _

 

So, it turns out that Keith has no idea they’re rivals at all. Lance has been wishing pestilence and pain upon him and Keith has just been...out there living his stupidly talented life.

“You’re telling me you haven’t noticed any of it? How we take all the same classes and you do, like, just slightly better than me? How we applied for the same exact summer fellowships last summer and you got my top choice? How we reached for the exact same piece of candy in Professor Coran's communal bowl last week?!”

Keith looks like he’s about to laugh and he’s shaking his head, eyebrows raised in apparent amusement. And yeah, when Lance says it out loud, okay, it sounds kind of dumb and petty, but seriously? Lance has been busting his ass to one up this guy for a year and a half and he hasn’t even noticed? Hasn’t felt even remotely threatened? 

“How is this somehow more embarrassing than anything else that has happened tonight…” Lance groans, wishing he could throw his hands over his face and melt into the covers. 

“It’s not because I think you’re dumb or anything, Lance,” Keith says calmly, popping a bugle into his mouth. He had offered Lance some until they both realized the only way he could actually eat any of them was if Keith fed them to him, and there was no fucking way that was happening.

“I just don’t think about that stuff.” 

“So you never try to be the best, it just happens,” Lance deadpans.

Keith flushes and rewards Lance with a full slightly embarrassed smile, even as he ducks his head to hide it, “when you say it like that I sound like an asshole.” 

“You are an asshole,” Lance informs primly, but Keith’s blush has something pleasant fluttering around in the pit of his stomach. 

Keith ignores the observation. “I didn’t even know other people applied for the Evan Rose grant.” 

“Yeah, dude, like, five of us.”

Keith’s eyes widen. “Fuck, seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously,” if it was anyone else, Lance wouldn’t believe that they didn’t know. But he trusts Keith, for some unpinnable reason. It just doesn’t seem like something he’d lie about. “You and I were the finalists, though.”

“How do you even know all this?”

Lance tries to shrug and then remembers his current predicament and slouches his arms. “I was hooking up with a girl who works in the Center for Life Beyond Altea.”

“Oh,” Keith rolls his eyes, which, hey, rude and judgy, “I wasn’t. So it makes sense I didn’t know.”

“Yeah but everyone tries to find out somehow, Keith,” Lance can’t believe he’s explaining driven kid basics to the student with the most natural talent to come through Altea University in years. What even in his life? 

Keith ignores him, which is probably good because Lance is at a cross between slapping him and just incredulously laughing. 

“What was your project proposal on?” 

Lance narrows his eyes at Keith. “Why? So you can steal my amazing idea for next year?”

“No, because I’m curious and I wanna know.”

Lance shifts, eyes still narrowed at Keith in suspicion. This is admittedly… a somewhat touchy topic for him. He had worked harder on his proposal than he had on anything else in his entire life. He’d read it to his family members, his roommates, his friends - anyone who had notes, anyone who was willing to listen. It was the most elegant thing he had ever written. It wasn’t good for a scholarship kid or good for someone who has dyslexia or good for the guy who barely made the cut for this program in the first place. It was good period.

And it wasn’t going to happen. Not unless Lance could find another old rich white dude to fund his project. So yeah, he wasn’t exactly in the mood to rehash the experience, but... fuck it if Lance was gonna pass up on the chance to talk about fluorescamine labeled amino acids.

Keith is surprisingly attentive as Lance rambles, interrupting to ask questions here and there but Lance doesn’t mind, he likes it, actually, not that his Mama isn’t a great cheerleader but it’s nice to talk about these things with someone who actually knows what the hell he’s talking about. Keith seems genuinely interested too, Bugles abandoned as he leans forward and braces his arms on his knees, Lance occupying his full attention.

“ _Lance_ ,” Keith says when Lance finishes, his bangs pushed back and his eyes wide.

“What?” Lance asks, grinning because he knows exactly what. Yeah, he’s a motherfucking genius.

“Yeah, shut up, asshole,” Keith laughs, sounding a little dazed as he leans back for the first time since Lance started talking about his proposal, “can you send me the full proposal? I really want to read the rest of it.” 

“Yeah, I could,” Lance says, feeling slightly sheepish. “Sure. If you’re really interested.”

“Duh,” Keith says, as if that explains everything. They sit for a couple seconds in silence, and Keith is the one to break it for a change, shifting around and finally saying, “you know, I’m feeling a little threatened right now.”

Lance laughs. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“I’m serious,” he insists, “Altea better start making more than one grant for students of color in STEM. I don’t want to be up against your project next year.”

“Well cool your jets, Mullet, I don’t think I’m even applying next year."

Keith’s brow furrows. “Why?" 

Lance sighs. He feels a little pathetic explaining it, but he figures he blew the pathetic meter right out of the water when he told Keith he needed a second to bond with the tiny saw, so he pushes on. “You’re supposed to apply with a new project every year, and I don’t think I can let this one go quite yet. I’m trying to find the funding somewhere else but it’s… not looking so great. Might just have to wait until next year.”

“I can help.”

“Um, Keith, no offense but I was just in your kitchen. I know you’ve been surviving solely off Ramen and faith the past two months.” 

Keith rolls his eyes but smiles. “Not by funding the project myself, idiot. By helping you find someone else. I’m a low income Gay Asian orphan. I know a lot about grants.”

“Oh,” Lance says, too shocked to manage a statement more nuanced, “seriously?” 

“Sure. Text me sometime tomorrow, We can get together and I’ll call up some old rich people I know.”

“Fuck,” Lance says, then, “thanks Keith.”

That phrase is starting to get a little too worn out for his liking. 

 

_**3: 01 AM** _

 

When Lance decides he can’t possibly talk about school a second longer, Keith opens his laptop and asks if he wants to watch the new Game of Thrones.

Lance makes an earnest effort not to laugh. “You still watch Game of Thrones?”

Keith, apparently, does not know how embarrassing this is and pops about ten Bugles in his mouth at one time. He chases it down with a swallow of Pepsi. Boys, Lance thinks, are disgusting. 

“Yeah,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “I like it. I’m invested in Sansa. Are you not caught up?”

Lance shakes his head, “I only watch when Hunk does. I don’t mind, though.”

“Are you sure?"

Lance thinks about Keith balancing the laptop on their knees, sidling up next to Lance, the soft texture of his jeans making indents in Lance’s thigh, the length of their arms pressed firmly together. 

“Yeah,” he says, shifting over a bit, “I don’t mind.”

It seems like a good idea when Keith sits down next to him, when Keith opens his laptop and Lance sees a picture of him and Shiro as kids as his screensaver and just about melts, and when Keith leans in probably closer than strictly necessary to tell him he can play the theme song on the piano, but once the actual episode starts Lance realizes Keith is the spawn of Satan himself.

“What are you doing?” Lance asks, confused as Keith’s moves the cursor two minutes ahead in the episode.

“Nothing’s happening,” Keith says, shrugging, “I’m bored.”

“Wh - you can’t just skip ahead in the story, you’ll miss important plot details!" 

“You don’t even watch the show anymore,” Keith is fighting a smile but this is serious, this is - a punishable offense, a _crime_ , “why do you care?”

“Yeah but you watch the show! You should care!” 

Keith gives him an unimpressed look, some of his bangs dropping into his eyes. “About this onion guy?”

“About the way the episode builds,” Lance explains, placing a stilling hand on Keith’s as he tries to skip forward again, “you can’t just jump ahead to your favorite parts. You have to _earn_ them.” 

“Uh-uh,” Keith says, but Lance notices he has not moved his hand. Lance pointedly does not move his hand either. They smile at each other. Interesting.

“I think you’re just a masochist, Lance.”

Lance snorts. “I am not.”

Keith’s gaze very pointedly moves to where Lance is cuffed to the headboard, Lance blushes, and then almost shoves him off the bed for his responding laugh. 

 

_**3:58 AM** _

 

The clock on Keith’s bedside table reads ‘ass o’clock’. Everyone has left the party by now and the house is so peaceful, the thumping bass and the permeating laughter having finally subsided. Lance finds he’s exhausted, and starting to doze off with Keith’s big fluffy pillow supporting his back and his fleece all soft and warm beneath his thighs. He feels bad about Keith having moved back onto the floor, but inviting him back onto the bed seems….weird.

“You should call the cops on me,” Lance groans, turning on his side the best he can to look down at Keith.

He went to the bathroom to change a while back, so he’s traded in his jeans for stretchy, soft looking sweatpants and a threadbare sweater. His glasses are way too big for his face and they keep slipping down his nose and he keeps pointlessly pushing them back up. Lance kind of loves it, and he privately adds it to the list of Boy Things he likes.

“Probably,” Keith turns to look at Lance too, his mouth quirked in that same half smile, “But then who would get butt sweat all over my favorite blanket?”

“ _Butt sweat_?” Lance is horrified. Aghast. “Just who do you think I am, Mul-”

It is this moment that Takashi Shirogane, Keith’s older brother and Lance’s inspiration for three of his five vision boards, pushes into the room. Keith (mostly uselessly) tosses a towel of Lance’s semi-naked body.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Yes, well, anything to defend your honor.”

“Um,” Shiro says, blushing and looking at the floor, “there’s a girl here for you, Lance, should I tell her to come back later?”

“It’s Pidge, right?” Lance sighs. “I figured they’d come for me eventually.”

Shiro still looks incredibly uncomfortable and a glance at Keith from the corner of Lance’s eye tells him he is enjoying it immensely. “No, actually, it’s not Pidge I think her name’s-”

“Lance?” the voice of the devil calls from the hallway.

“Oh thank god.” 

“Who’s that?” Keith asks, rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses and looking expectantly at Lance. His hair is slightly mussed and Lance knows he should be answering but looking at Keith is so much more pleasant than whatever confrontational conversation awaits him in the hallway.

“Nyma,” Lance says finally, and then pushes his voice a little louder, “and if she doesn’t have the key she’s not allowed in!”

Nyma shoves Shiro out of the way and emerges in the doorframe, the key pinched between her painted red fingernails. Lance is a wimp so he doesn’t really say anything, just looks embarrassed in her general direction, but the look Keith’s leveled at her could cut through diamond.

Nyma merely smirks in return, tossing the key at him. Keith catches it deftly, maintaining his glare.

“Sorry, Lance. Needed your key card to visit my girlfriend.”

“Wh - _Seriously_? If you asked, I would have just swiped you in!”

Nyma dips her shoulder and grins, a wicked dimple pushing in her cheek, “But this was so much more fun, right?”

“Not at all,” Lance says.

“Literally for who?” Keith deadpans.

“Why are there still so many people in my house,” Shiro groans, his forehead pressed against the doorframe.

Honestly, Nyma still doesn’t look remorseful, just shrugs and gives everyone a little wave before ducking out of the room. Shiro grumbles a bit about needing sleep and pads off down the hall - maybe Lance can convince him this was a fever dream later? Lance isn’t entirely sure it’s not, especially as Keith rises from the floor and settles at the edge of the bed. His fingers brush across Lance’s skin as he finally unlocks him, and he doesn’t pull away once they’re off, his hands curling sweetly around Lance’s wrists.

“You’re probably so sore,” Keith says, rubbing the skin there gently.

“Yeah,” Lance’s voice comes out so much softer than he was expecting, “yeah, it definitely doesn’t tickle.”

They stare at each other for a couple of dragging seconds, Keith’s thin, cold fingers still moving across Lance’s wrists. It feels… nice. And Lance really ought to put his clothes on, to seize the opportunity to finally fucking leave this room and this night behind, but… well. He really hasn’t been _all_ bad.

“I wanted to kiss you,” Keith says very suddenly. Lance nearly shrieks. He doesn’t have time to say anything before Keith pushes forward.“When we were watching Game of Thrones, I wanted to kiss you, but I didn’t because you couldn’t push me away or even leave if you didn’t want to or didn’t like it, so I thought probably it was the wrong time to kiss you, but I um. I definitely wanted to.”

“Oh,” Lance’s shock has melted into something more pleasant, an excited smile fighting its way onto his mouths despite his best efforts, “and now?”

“And now,” Keith’s eyes are dark and intense as they bore into Lance’s, but there’s also a thin layer of...nerves, Lance thinks. Nerves he never thought to look for before. Keith wets his lips. “Now you could leave. If you don’t like it.”

“Yeah. I could.”

Keith is still just staring at him.

“Keith,” Lance says, sitting up and tentatively reaching to brush Keith’s hair away from his forehead, “I’m still here.”

“Right,” Keith says, and finally, thankfully, leans forward, takes Lance’s face between his hands, and kisses him. _Really_ kisses him, like teeth and tongue and sliding-a-hand-down-Lance’s-spine kind of kissing him, and it feels...amazing. Like a good Drake beat he can feel in his heart, a sip of an ice cold cocktail, or maybe the first time you try out that thing you love most in the world, the one that sticks with you for the rest of your life.

“Wow,” Keith says, his glasses crooked on his nose and his slightly clammy hand still on Lance’s cheek.

Lance curls his fingers into the back of Keith’s t-shirt, “same.”

 

_**2:00 PM** _

 

_are u here yet_

_can u at least tell me if ur on campus_  

_did u rly cut ur hair_

 

In all of Lance’s prior romantic entanglements, he would have felt a rush of crushing anxiety at the prospect of triple texting before he and the babe he was wooing had even been on a first date, but today? Worry is a notably absent emotion in his chest.

This is due in part to the constant communication he and Keith remained in over winter break. It had started with a text from Lance on his train ride back, a meme tentatively sent, the number of laugh-cry emojis following it meticulously counted. Keith had responded almost immediately, and by the middle of December they were texting each other good night, good morning, good evening, and good four o’clock in the morning. Lance was positively giddy about it, despite the fact he endured a knowing glance from a different sister every time he stealthily tried to open a message at the diner table. He doesn’t even care, the snaps of Keith’s drooly old family Beagle are so worth it.

 

**I’m on my way. Feel free to order without me.**

_u srsly don’t want me to wait?_  

 **I seriously don’t want to watch you order a venti cup of whipped cream.**  

_OH MY GOD that was one time_

 

Lance texts Keith thirty knife emojis before sliding out of his booth and skipping up to the counter. He dutifully orders Keith an iced green tea, Keith texts him the Sure Jan gif, and Lance politely tells the barista it’s cool if she spits in it.

The bell on the coffee shop door jingles, and Lance turns around way too fast to be cool and suave. He’s half glad it’s not Keith so he can have another try at his dramatic reunion face, pondering if smoothing a hand over his hair as he turns around is too much.

He’s still contemplating this when he feels someone place a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey,” is all Keith says before he tugs Lance forward by his jacket and kisses him sweetly on the mouth.

So it turns out his dramatic reunion face is a dopey smile and soft, lidded eyes. Whatever. He can do the suave thing later.

“Hey,” Lance says, reluctantly pulling away from Keith to gesture to the counter. “Got you a green tea.”

“I have something for you, too, actually,” Keith is smiling a sharp, mirthful smile and Lance’s brow raises.

“Oh?” he asks, looking curiously at the bag slung over Keith’s shoulder.

Keith holds up a finger and dips his hand into it, and Lance barely catches a glint of silver before something heavy is being shoved in the pocket of his hoodie. His fingers close around thin metal hoops, and his face flushes in recognition.

“I forgot I left them,” he half laughs, barely able to look at Keith from the corner of his eye.

“Like Cinderella.”

Lance elbows Keith and snorts, but he doesn’t resist when Keith slips his palm into Lance’s. Keith’s hand is still clammy. Lance idly wonders if it’s been that way all break, and gives it a gentle squeeze.

“Yeah,” he says, grinning, “kind of like Cinderella.”

**Author's Note:**

> hope u liked it come yell at me about voltron on tumblr @ quidhitch also big thanks to isaksvalterson for looking this over before i published!!!


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